Anthony Dod Mantle

Anthony Dod Mantle is an Academy Award-winning cinematographer, responsible for such films as Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later, Dogville, Rush, and The Last King of Scotland.  In addition, Anthony was one of the pioneering voices in the Dogme 95 movement, having soared to international recognition for his collaboration with Thomas Vinterberg on the 1998 instant classic Festen (The Celebration).  

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SPEAKER_02 0:03

The the projects that seem to attract me may be as extreme as Idi Amin and Paul Pot, Motor Racing and Snowden and the Sex Pistols, they're all so different. But there's something fundamental in each of those projects that I tap into that is an essence of what that project is about, which has something that equates with where I am in my life at that time.

NP 0:30

That was Anthony Doc Mantle, and this is Nordic Portrait. Anthony Dot Mantle is an Academy Award-winning cinematographer responsible for such films as Slum Dog Millionaire, Twenty-Eight Days Later, Dogville, Rush, and The Last King of Scotland. In addition, Anthony was one of the pioneering voices in the dogma movement of the 1990s, having soared to international recognition for his collaboration with Thomas Winterberg on his 1998 instant classic, Feston, or The Celebration. Anthony, welcome to Nordic Portraits.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Thank you very much, Ben.

NP 1:25

Anthony, I wanted to start by going back to the 1970s, where as a young man in your early twenties, you'd moved to Denmark as a love refugee, and in the spirit of trying to do the grown-up thing, you went shopping with your then girlfriend for items for your apartment. But instead of buying the pots and pans that you so required, you spied a shiny object in the corner of the store. And I I just wondered what that was and how that changed you in that moment.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

My goodness, me, I am impressed you've done your research. But yeah, it's uh it is in essence the reason I'm sitting here now with a few more cameras on the shelf gathering dust. But uh I love the word love refugee. It's something a great deal of other visitors in this country of Denmark can identify with. And I was partially a love refugee and partially an explorer, an inquisitive explorer looking for something else. I wasn't sure what, and I wasn't sure how it could exist, but I knew that my life needed something else than what up to that point had been a very wonderfully protected, comfortable, middle class British upbringing in a family comparatively happy, one older brother, younger sister, mum and dad, you know, a mini cooper. Everything was going fine, and I had friends and even had a girlfriend or two, but there was something around about the age of 20 where I realised I had to open my eyes and open my ears and see something else. And that started with a minor short-term exploration from England to France, where I lived in France for a while and worked a bit and travelled around, but that kind of ended abruptly, and I went back to England again and went back home to live. Uh at that time, my father was travelling a lot, and my brother was at Cambridge University, and my sister had moved out, so I was in the house alone with my mum. So we had a very interesting period of time. This is a slight digression, but it's important to say we had a very interesting period of our relationship where I kind of really, for the first time, got to know my mother much, much, much more deeply as a person, as an artist, as a thinking, sensitive, vulnerable person. She wasn't not just my glorious mum. And that I would say enhanced even further the fact that I needed to break the bond and get away. And so in Cambridge I met this Danish woman, Susanna, who uh became my girlfriend. And without really knowing where Denmark was, I was convinced it was part of Holland and it was a short trip on a boat. Couldn't understand we were on the boat for 18 hours and there were waves of rocking around. I ended up on a pig farm with 27 horses and a lovely Danish family in Jutland, just outside Aules, and uh started to have a daily life there, very much as a passenger, I would say. I had no economic founding or anything. I had no savings. I was just there in love, living with the family, and tried my best every day to help out on the farm, and everything I'd touched did not turn to gold. It was a catastrophe. And within three months, they'd moved me into a little flat just to get me out of the area. As much as they loved me, they wanted to get me out of the area because I was just causing so much damage inadvertently. So we moved into a flat in Aarhus, and I then started to develop an interest in photography because I knew, going back to my idea that I had to break out of home and find myself, and I started doing other courses while I became unemployed after six or seven months, and one of those things was photography. And I started to go into the dark room for the first time, and I would literally disappear into a dark room, you know, with pretty average photographs that I'd taken on black and white negative of the old town in Aarhus, and I'd spend about 19 hours in the room trying to make these pictures look good. And I came out the next day without food and with a strange taste in my mouth and feeling on my stomach because I hadn't eaten for 20 hours, and I come back home to sleep for a day. And I started to learn more and more about photography and to get to the point. One day we were out still trying to impress her parents that we were capable of looking after ourselves. We were out trying to buy things like frying pans and carpets for the flat because we were about to have my in-laws visiting for an evening dinner to see how we got on. And uh I'm standing and looking at these frying pans and things, and lo and behold, as you quite rightly said, there's this silver box in the corner, which I lifted the lid up of, and there was this Canon FTB camera with a few lenses, and it all looked very, very surgical and interesting, and almost like a almost like a Michael Cain hitbox for a weapon or something. And I thought, this is me. And Sue stood there next to me and said, What's that? And she knew I was doing my courses, and we took no firing pants home with me, spent all the money on this camera, and I took it home, put it on the floor in the flat. There wasn't much fun. She showed her parents that's what I was going to do. And that's where it kind of started. I was learning about photography and I was beginning to believe that I could perhaps find a way of expressing myself and exploring the world and finding a reason to do it. It was a combination of the potential of traveling, seeing another world. I was already in another world in the Danish society, a world I didn't know and really understand. I'd come from post-punk provincial Cambridge and London to this world where you'd go out at night and investigate, and there would be strange men with little hearts on chains dancing around the dance floor with like clogs and baggy trousers with flowers on, and there were lovely women dancing around on the dance floor. And me standing there feeling quite alienated, but quite absorbed and interested in what this strange world was coming out of Britain into this Scandinavian society. And I felt very much at home meeting people. So I developed friendships really quickly, and that is combined with my slow embedding myself more and more into the world of still photography. And we then started to save together as a pair to go to India for as long as possible. And that was partly my excuse was that my grandparents were tea planters and I had a family reason for going back there to explore it. But I think I've always been like that. I had to create some kind of title and reason for what I do when really I don't always know exactly why I'm doing it. But my instinct says I should go this way. And I think my life has always been like that. And in that time in 1979, it was a year in India, taking thousands of photographs and coming back with many, many abysmal images. But amongst those thousands of images, there were enough to get me feeling I could perhaps allow myself the luxury of applying for a BA course in photography in England. So I applied and was very fortunate to get in. That's where it started.

NP 8:00

It's easy to forget what the analogue world was like, but how was that for you after returning from this really formative year in India, having shot 300 odd rolls of film, to come back and see these developed?

SPEAKER_02 8:15

It was shocking because you you take a lot of images and I remember things. So I, you know, when you take a picture, you have hope. It's like um nowadays when you take a picture and digital and you have a file and there's embedded in there all sorts of digital information that travels down the pipeline and comes back at you with a vengeance, you know, it's like a digital language. When we're talking, you know, late 70s, 80s, when you're working in analog, you take a picture, the brain works in the same way. There's a there's an emotional suspicion, if not hope, that there was something there. And through my experience there early on as a budding photographer, really, and then into my education period, and then even afterwards when I was qualified and started doing documentaries, I realized you have this system, despite what anybody says, and whatever happens, you have this feeling impressed on your brain and memory that that could be a good one. That was difficult. But let's see how that turns out. And when you come back from India, as I did there after nine months, I had these thousands of pictures, black and white in colour, and I had to sort through them. And that is in itself a process of horror, disgust. How pathetic is that? And how amazing is that, and how unforeseen is that? It's like a balance between shock, horror, and unforeseen glory. And I think that is probably four very appropriate words from my career science. But uh, and I mean that with all modesty, but uh basically out-of-bat sorting process, which is what you do in your life when you're choosing or trying to navigate your way through life in your career, in your emotional life, and in the way you solve problems as they come at you in our lives, in general, you kind of navigate it's a mixture of circumstance, coincidence, and your own responsibility for what your actions are, and there's no guarantee for anything, and there's a lot of luck involved. So, yeah, out of those thousands of pictures, really, there were there were 12 or 15 or 20 pictures that I thought were worthy, and that got me into a three-year academic course, which is then a stepping stone, and then a new exploration. I started that course thinking I was going to be certainly not a fashion photographer, maybe a documentary photographer. And I started a BA course, and my mentors were people like Don McCullen, who's an extraordinary brilliant photographer in his own right, and there were other masters and teachers I had there. I was very privileged, and also my exploration of photography developed into cinematography and different kinds of media, performance, and art in general, and I found that my general direction as far as image making was concerned was moving into perhaps the moving image. By the time I'm in the third year of the BA course, and I felt spiritually and politically a lot more savvy, I felt a lot more established, I'd read some good books, I'd met some good people, I felt in London in those three years I kind of injected a serious foundation, harder, more solid paving slabs to what kind of person I was and where I was going to go. And I think my inspirations there from people like Nick Rogue, who are an English filmmaker, I think storytelling and the storytellers that fascinated me, the Takoskis, the Bergmans, you know, they're international people, but I felt I knew I was developing and I was beginning to see a world in front of me that was film. But I was no way traditional in the sense that I was willing to, or capable of walking up the streets of Sorrow with a can of film under my arm and do the hard work, become a runner, become an assistant. I wasn't technically very disciplined, I was more artistically driven and inquisitive and inspired by a thing that I saw in front of me. It could be a painting. You know, the galleries of London stimulate you whenever you want. You just stand in front of an incredible work of art and time stops. And that's what's driven me. And it's my routing from back in my family when my mother was a painter, and I've grown up with the stink of turbentine and paints. That's been my life, so it's what's driven me. But you then have to work out a way of strategically organizing your life so you can actually convince people that you're worthy of finding a path in that industry which is very, in a way, disciplined. You know, you have to develop a certain degree of technical understanding and knowledge and brilliance to be accepted as a person capable of being responsible of executing a job. So it's a mixture of getting to that status, which is through education. In that case, it was a BA, but it wasn't enough for me. I knew I didn't I was an artist, but I needed more, so that brought me back to Denmark and an application to the then fantastic film school. And I applied as a freak English person. I'd written a thesis about Danish directors, and they kind of looked at me, I think, thought, who is this guy? And you know, they have a tradition for taking in the odd Swede or Norwegian or somebody from the Faroes or Iceland, but I think they took me in because I was a bit different and obviously had some pictures that they were interested in. It was a hard place to get into, but I feel I'm online now. I've got to really embed myself in technicality and the science of filmmaking, and then maintain somewhere deep down in my pockets the artistic integrity of whoever I am and keep that intact.

NP 13:16

But it's interesting to me that your experience in London and being taught and mentored by the likes of Don Cullen, Peter Greenaway, and others seems to have resulted more in you establishing a philosophical point of view rather than the purely visual or developing the technical know-how. Would that be fair to say?

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Yeah, I think whether I consider myself retrospectively as some kind of artist and communicator or not, prior to that is the fact your persona is finding its DNA. As I said, I grew up protected, I grew up middle class, I grew up safe, privileged in relation to many, many people, not overprivileged, but comfortable, which is in itself a very important aspect. So I was kind of armoured with a strength that allowed me the luxury to jump out of middle classness and see how the other world lives. And I suppose India was a very extreme jump into another world and subject myself, you know, in the middle of the night in Calcutta, walking around with a soup kitchen organization, just photographing people with a camera and not really knowing why I'm doing it, but seeing things that I could not believe, seeing the phenomena of India, seeing these kids on the street with crippled bodies, you know, on skateboards. There are all sorts of extreme examples I can throw at you that are ultimately responsible for telling me and reminding me that I've been a very lucky human being and the world is a very complex place. Yes, it's a very visual place, and I'd love to work with a visual medium and try and express something. That's what's driving my need to express myself. But prior to that is the fact that you have conscience and you have a humility and a value of life, an acceptance of how fortunate you are yourself and how unfortunate many, many people are. So it doesn't make me some kind of political philanthropist, but it means that the world is complex. And if you have a good heart and an open mind and a good set of eyes, there is a space for you to look at that and try and get yourself and in turn other people to look a second time at what is going on in the world around you. And that then could possibly become a report, it could become a work of art, it could become a piece of journalism, it could become a memory that never becomes public. But in my case, it is my memories and my experiences that seemingly I'm not an independent author, I work in a team with films that sometimes are about something else than my life is about. But I project into those projects I do, whether it be about homeless people in India, which is not coincidental. I made films about India, but could be somewhere in Cuba, it could be a working class environment in Bispapia. You know, you project parts of your own persona into that, so you're adding to whatever the slabs of the story are by putting yourself into it. And I think that's what I do. And I think it seems to have ended now as a visual project that my life has become, and I leave carnage behind me of endless negatives and positive images and chaos around me in exhibitions and films that I've been part of. That's the result of it, but it's not the initial driving force. The driving force is fundamental humility, a humble eye on the world, and enthusiasm to communicate and being inquisitive.

NP 16:37

So when you did graduate from the Danish film school and joined the crew for Lona Schafi's film Kai's Fusus Day, what is your memory of being the first AC on that project? Speaking of technical prowess, Anthony.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

An absolute demonstration of trust given to me by Kim Hudderson. Dear Kim, I thank you for entrusting in me that job, which I was really severely not capable of in the beginning. But you trusted me and you gave me the chance, and I transformed from being one of the worst celluloid-based camera assistants in the world, watching rushes every day as we did in those old days, where you make a film and you meet up the next day and you watch the consequence of your work, and the crew sit there, the producer, the director, sometimes the actors, everybody. And my work, which I was responsible for just getting those actors sharp on film in front of, and they were literally clapping if the picture was sharp. They weren't clapping if the performance was because there were so few pictures that were sharp, and I did not get fired. I mean, most people have walked, and I have to say, to Lona, to the people, to Kim, they let me go, and I got good very quickly, but I was sure as hell terrible. So technical prowess, that was no illustration of that. But I became good, and it also taught me the value and the extraordinary complexity of that job, which is part of what I now do as a DOP, as a director of photography. I'm totally indebted to the people around me who secure whatever vision myself and the directors, whatever we create on set, it's down to the craft of understanding the value of that. And I would often say the worst DOP is the DOP who points a finger at his own people if you make a mistake. You're responsible for that. If you don't give the person, in this case, a focus pull or a proper T-stop, which creates a depth of feel, which creates a sharpness, gives them a chance. If you don't grant them that cadot of respect, then you risk the picture being out of focus. So I know how important that work is, and I would never point the finger at them. I'd walk myself if I felt I was doing it wrong. That was no declaration of brilliance, but it got me the knowledge and it got me the understanding again how important that job is. So I left Poland, the wall came down, you know, we lost half our crew overnight because the Poles all drove to the border in their trabance to see the walk. And we woke up the next day and we had half a crew and we could barely shoot. And uh it was an extraordinary period in my life, and it was my first experience really full-time on a film set. And they embraced me and it gave me the courage to think maybe I'm not a focus puller, I can now pull focus, but maybe I'm designed perhaps to be a director of photography ultimately, but I know what it takes, and it's taught me an awful lot. And I kind of had a period after that of doing documentaries, smaller crews, trying to keep embedding, as I said, my own personal view on life into the projects I was doing, and I gradually moved into the world of of cinematography, and then the fiction work came with Carsten Rudolph and uh Thomas Winterberg early on.

NP 19:40

Well, you mentioned Thomas Winterberg. What is your recollection of how you and Thomas first approached Dogma and how together you embarked on creating this unique visual aesthetic for what is now considered one of the great Danish masterpieces, Veston?

SPEAKER_02 19:59

So Thomas, we'd done one film together, which was a lovely experience. We did the greatest heroes together with Thomas Bor Larsen and Ulrich Thompson and Trina Durhan, and that was my kind of christening in Danish film together with Carlson Rudolph, which was a less appreciated film, but it's still a visually interesting film. And then Thomas came along, and we're suddenly looking at this dogma project, which is largely inspired by Lars, of course, Lars on Trio, but Thomas is a very close part of that. I think Thomas and Lars communicated well and honestly about that creatively. And there we are together with one piece of slightly more conventional Celluloid work behind us on this absurd, attractive for me. I love it because it's different, and it fits into my DNA of, as I tried to imply earlier, I never really came in the traditional way. I came in left-wing with a load of artistic, poetic ideas about what cinema could be. And the people that inspired me most were the Maverick poets, the people that took risks. And it wasn't the studio system, whatever the studio system was. I understood the need and the value of high-end expensive studio commercial filmmaking, but that wasn't what triggered me. It wasn't what kept me alive. And you know, Thomas was a storyteller and a there's a poetic quality to his approach in his work, and Lars, we all know what Lars is capable of. I was very fortunate to be in a country that I wouldn't say particularly at that time was all about Lars and Thomas. It was all about the studio filmmaking, the traditional, traditional filmmaking, good films. Conventional stories, and out of the blue come these people who are thinking differently. And that appealed to me. And I felt at home with these people. They felt like my planet in this country that I was still learning to couple turns with, finding a life in Copenhagen in a small flat. And I meet Thomas and I meet Lars, and they become my go to club. And uh the dogma, the dogma film movement just turned up out of the blue because of Lars. And then very quickly, I have absolutely no difficulty in not just accepting it, but Actually, feeling attracted to it because it's different. And I made enough films by them. I'd made four or five films, you know, in traditional setups and traditional thinking to know that it's interesting to challenge that. Always challenge the convention. And I've done that most of my life with success and failure rates that were 50-50. And as far as dogma's concerned, it was yet another idea in from the left. Try this. And I do remember very clearly everybody from Henning Christ Jensen was my teacher at film school, and you know, a symbol of authority and an Oscar nominee himself. He said, you know, this is a bit dangerous, isn't he? As a photographer, you realize this is a revolution. I used to sort of giggle a bit. And he'd come and film behind the scenes while I was hanging off a windowsill with no security with a little digital Sony PC3 camera hanging out the window with no light, photographing, and he was right. And I understood he was right, but it didn't really bother me. It didn't really resonate. I was just doing something that a group of people had come together to agree was doing. And it never inspired any form of doubt or fear in me at all. I just thought it was fun. And I remember some of my colleagues saying this is rubbish. You know, why make films without light? Why do this? Why do that? What's it all about? Sniggering, collegial jealousy, a mixture of enthusiasm, but also jealousy or envy that some people would like to have a go at that, but they don't dare, so they don't do it. But when other people do it, you can find yourself envying. I'm trying to be honest and not negative about my colleagues. I I'm capable of that feeling myself. Oh, I wish I'd done that. I didn't take a chance. So I've always been that kind of person who takes a chance. And I think that resonates with people who think, yeah, he will take a chance. And it became very simple after day one, sitting in the car, driving in this little bubble car down to Skillness Horn with Thomas Winterberg, both with our newborn babies, saying, What on earth are we doing? We've got a five-week shoot here with wonderful actors. Are we doing the right thing? Do you think this is going to be a success? We giggle each other on our little drive down to the place every morning and wonder what on earth we were doing, but we just did it. And I have to say thank you to Thomas, thank you to the dogma, but also thank you to Valdis and thank you to the actors and thank you to the producers who allowed that little project to exist and travel the journey through editing to post to become a very angry, rebellious film that turned up in Cannes at the right time. Again, there's a certain amount of luck and coincidence. It turns up in Cannes at the right time. Lars's dogma film, The Idiots, was originally intended for main competition, whereas Thomas's might have turned up in a certain regard, and a week before Lars's film gets popped into certain regards out of main competition, and Thomas's film, Oh my goodness, comes into main competition. And we succeed. And there's red banners hanging out of the windows in these balconies. And you know, I'm standing there with my Walmart tuxedo secondhand with the likes of Vittorio Storero and Scorsese with their handmade scarf collection suits and cameras on me and them talking about formats and aspect races, it all happens very quickly, it's all madness. And that's the first experience I had of being a potted plant in the launderette of the public light of filmmaking, which then repeated itself in the Oscars later on, which is the same thing again. It's a circus and it's fun, but it's not really what it's about.

NP 25:15

Well, if that project was an exercise in taking risks and pushing boundaries, it feels like your next film, Julian Donkey Boy, with Harmony Corinne, turned up the anarchy and chaos to eleven. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_02 25:31

Yeah, I mean Harmony, uh coming from Feston, at that stage, I think we had to have some kind of public success. I'm somewhere on holiday with my now wife, Susanna, and I get this mail or fax from Harmony Corinne in New York, and he'd split the script up into three chapters that were out of order deliberately, so I could just read it. And he knew I was capable of reading that. Some people would just laugh. And I knew of Harmony, but I didn't really know him well. I knew of Gummer, which I think is a masterpiece in cinema, absolute masterpiece. And uh he said, you know, what about this? What about that? And I talked to him about the order and the organization and realized that's not something you talk to Harmony about because he's interested in chaos and he's interested very much in finding some kind of expression in chaos, which I understand. It's not always unstressful, it's quite demanding, but I understood that, and very soon we were married to the idea of making this film Julian Donkey Boy, which was a bunch of yeah, we're not freaks, but we're a bunch of alternative thinking people, and that suits for the producers. Carrie Woods, Clarissa Vigny, Ewan Bremner, who became my mate and is my lifelong friend now, and train spotter Spud from Trainspotting.

NP 26:38

Werner Herzog?

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Yeah, Werner Herzog. How could you forget Werner? Who was a symbol of inspiration for Harmony and to a certain degree for mine, more academic for me because I didn't know him, but Harmony had direct experiences with Werner, and he was very important to him. So Werner came in and we made this film, and it was again an absolutely absurd journey into New York. It was my first experience living in New York in the Gramacy Hotel before it was revamped, and I was living next door to Harmony, and there was this odd atmosphere of undercurrent, Queens, New York artist environment. We were, I realized how small a village New York is, the film village. And you go to a dinner on a Friday night and it would be the entertainment weekly dinner, and I'd be sitting next to Puff Daddy and Gus Van Sant and all these people just driving in their limos. And he realized it's a small village, a little network, and he was part of that. And Harmony nearly succumbed, you know, health-wise, to being destroyed by that because he was such a hipster and such an adored, revered, fascinating figure in a world that was both an art world but also a world prone to exploitation and drugs and stuff like that. And we went through a very interesting period there. But the film is an absolute salute to uh a film without a vocabulary, there's no alphabet to it. And the legitimate echo of that and proof of that is a review by Janet Maslin, who was the most hated critique of the time because she was such a conformist, but she said this is probably the worst film I've ever seen in my life, and that was just what we needed. It was so good for that film. And it was yet another dogma film that generally got projected at the wrong aspect ratio. It wasn't projected as Academy, which is how I shot it. It was projected in widescreen. I went to the screening in Venice, which I'll never forget, with the likes of Harmony and Chloe, and my my wife, Ewan Werner, was there, and then Harvey Weinstein was there, and offering us a flight back to Canada or America in his plane. It was absurd. And we saw this massive screening of this Julian Dogboy film, which was bubbling away like a broigal up there on the wall, and there was a massive screening, a massive audience. And I thought this is extraordinary that we can get away with this and have an event and have an experience. And people kind of loved it. The people who were there loved it. There were lots of people who didn't like it and didn't understand it. But I know that film echoes something I believe in that. Give it a go, give it a try. If you believe in the soul, if you believe in the heart of the project, and I truly to this day believe in the soul and the heart of Harmony Corinne as an artist, I think he's a very important person and very valuable in my private life as well as artistic life. I think he's a very important person to have around. So it was logical for me. It was a logical step.

NP 29:19

What of the dogma philosophy would you say you've taken with you throughout your career, Anthony?

SPEAKER_02 29:26

Absolutely. The most important thing the dogma taught me, and I kind of sensed it before I even embarked on celebration, was the danger of habitual behavior, artistic habitual conformism. And this is coming from Lars, who's obviously a very, very aware artist and very aware of his own tendencies to repeat himself or slip into a pattern of foreseeable convention. And he's the voice of original idea and thought and writing and his filmmaking. One could discuss how good some films are in relation to it, it doesn't matter. He stood his ground, he's created a whole production network around how he could create the films the way he wanted to and how he wanted to. And hats off for that. He deserves every possible credit for being able to do that. So I saw it as a photographer, as a meager little cinema photographer that I am, this supposed anonymous character behind the camera, responsible for everybody's craft, but you are the anonymous person, invisible eye. I saw it as a homage and as an echo of that, that anything that I consider habitual or conventional is about to die. And I still see that today that you create waves, you throw a stone into the water, the ripples flow, and boom, boom, boom, they get smaller and smaller. And you may try and repeat something, you may try and do something that is worthy and momentarily has a place in history, a shock value, or as creatively a beauty and a value, you know, as a commercial entity. But that very soon becomes a pattern that will be copied and applied to other things, and it then becomes a fashion and a wave, and then it becomes anonymous and then it dies. And it's important to move on. And dogma taught me that. And when I went to America to the West Coast, to the studio world for the first time with a film, it was with Feston celebration. And I stood in a convention in Palm Springs in front of a horrific bunch of people who are pretty world-famous artists and producers, has some big guns there, and I stood there in my innocence, just out of can, just out of probably Donkey Boy, but it was about Feston. And I held the camera up and the cameras went. And I showed that film in America, and I was taken apart by some people who at that time my mentors. The likes of Vilma Sigmund, who was a very, very famous and acceptant and artistic DOP. He kind of stood up in front of 600 people and said, Why do you make films like this without light? And that upset me and shook me on the stage in front of the light was on me. And then Conrad Hall, who was another great, great, great, great cinematographer and very valuable person in my life, he came up to me and gave me a bear hug in front of a lot of people and said, Do not worry about what people think because that's already happened. It's part of the past. You've made a film, you've been part of a project that has an extraordinary value and extraordinary beauty, and it's a wave, and you have to get off that wave as quick as possible, do not repeat yourself and move on. And he was absolutely right. And I stayed close to him for the months, really more than years, because he died sadly. But uh his words stay with him forever. He just encouraged me to believe that you do what you do at the time and there's a reason for it, and it's it's partly under your control, but it's also under other people's control. And it's also a product of the time and coincidence and everything that's involved in making a film at a certain time, and then it's over. And then it's just a product, and then you stand by it and you respect it for what it was and is, and then if it stands, it's place in time, then it's made worthy because of that. But don't repeat yourself. Don't try and go back.

NP 32:48

So as someone as experienced and established as yourself, does that reinvention and the risks associated with it get easier or more difficult as you get more accomplished?

SPEAKER_02 33:01

I think the only thing I think the only thing we should really I should really put me on the block to think about is if the only thing that I think I should reinvent is the awareness of null stilling, you say, of of deleting the pattern that I had in the last project. Because when I do a project, it could be a year, it could be half a year, it could be two years, but I I'm pretty obsessed by it. It becomes part of my DNA, it becomes part of my life, it becomes some of my family life. I'm in that world and I'm thinking about it much more than I'm aware of. I'm thinking of it at night, so I sleep and dream about things, and I am doing that now about a film that I'm not even signed up to do, but I will do in the summer. It's already obsessing my brain and messing with me. And I think the most important thing if you talk about reinvention is to blot out, delete what you've done in relation to the last project, and open your heart and open your eyes and create a new alphabet for the new story and read it. Read it as the words that they are on paper. Listen to the people who have bought this project to me, listen to what they're saying, especially the author, the writer, the director, the people that are going to be most influential in my life if I'm going to do this next project. Listen to them, but then look at the words on the paper, look at the high points, look at the low points, look at the gaps between the words, and say, is there anything in between those words that there's a space there underneath the floorboards that is about something else that I can contribute in some way? That's where the reinvention takes place. That's the only reinvention I'm interested in. It's helping a project into a new world that has literally that set of words as its biblical content. It's a set of words on paper, and that's the thing we've got to do, and the actors are gonna say this and that, and the camera's gonna try and do this and that. But added to that, there's what you bring, which is a product of everything I've done in my life, from you know, the first bangers and mash I ate in the pub at four o'clock in the morning and the the first time I threw up drinking too much brown ale to the first time I saw the Taj Mahal or the first time I looked out of a window of an aeroplane and thought, what a beautiful world this is.

NP 35:02

With that critical lens by which you're evaluating a script that you may be reading for the first time. If we were to glance at your notes, what are you typically commenting on or looking for when reading a script for the first time?

SPEAKER_02 35:17

I think when I read a script for the first time, I just try and very quickly feel do I get I may be in the middle of something else. Uh often I am in the middle of something else or in the middle of three things. So that's in a sense a very realistic and suitable state of mind to be in because uh you run the risk of not being attracted enough to something because you haven't got sufficient brain cells to devote to it. But on the other hand, if it passes that test in the middle of so many other things, if a script stays with me and I read it, whether I read it fast or I read it twice, or I can't put it down, or I can put it down, those are very true signs of whether it's something that I feel I should use my life on. Because it is a life decision. You know that in relation to yourself, artistically, emotionally, economically, and also the most important things in your life, outside that which your relationship with your family and your kids and your your home life and your wife and your partner, you know, I know now enough about filmmaking and I have to have a long time to know how much time it takes. And it's time is a weird thing, it's not just physical time, tick-tock, tick-tock. It's also the the emotional energy you use on projects. If you are built the way I'm built, and I'm built the way I'm built, and I can't, it's like, you know, what's my tolerance of pain? I can't compare it to another human being. I just know what I am, I'm built the way I'm built. And when I go into the project, I know how much energy I'm going to invest in it, emotion I'm going to invest in it. So I have that in mind when I'm reading it. There's a sort of censorship going on in my own head saying, Anthony, is this worth it? Is this right for you? Is it worth it? Do you think this can sustain itself for a year or two of your life? You know, it's not something you imagined. It came into the letterbox. You didn't know anything about this world. Sometimes a project comes in, it's about something I know nothing about. And that's the magic of my world, that it's an instant kind of life saver, that it's an inspiration because it injects a whole new world into my life that never has a stable pattern. My stable life is I live at home, I live in a certain set of four walls, and I eat a certain amount of food. I go to the loo a couple of times a day and I drink water and I've got my friends. But what actually defines my life artistically and which will lurk around perhaps way after I've gone is what I put my hands on and my eyes on and dealt with. And that's an enormous part of your life. And it comes at you from the left, from the right, comes in through the window. You know, in the case of Angelina Jolie, who I work with in Cambodia, I was due to do a film in LA with Michael Winterbottom about Ross Mayer with Will Ferrell. I mean, nothing more attractive to me than that. Three mad people together, and the film hits the fan, collapses, and within three days I've got a phone call. And it's Angelina in the Khmer Rouge rice fields of Cambodia, and I'm down there a week later for six months. It's absurd. So you have to think to answer your question, there is no logical answer to it. It's a feeling of accepting there are higher forces in your life than you yourself control, artistically, certainly. And it's a kind of thing about going with the flow, which, as I said earlier, Conrad Hall did hold me in his arms and say, be strong enough to walk away and something else will come. Something else will come and that will be you. And instead of repeating yourself, which is very, very dangerous artistically. So he was right. And I think that situation going to Cambodia instead of going to downtown LA and making a comedy with the ferrule, which my kids would have loved about a mad filmmaker, Ross Mayer. I mean something so dynamically different with Kamer Rouge and Paul Pot in a sweaty bird influenza jungle of Cambodia for six months. It's absurd, isn't it? And you can't plan if you want to live a life like that. And my family support me and seem to understand as best they can that, you know, as I'm in the afternoon of my career, now I suppose it might get a bit easier, but the same dynamics still apply. It's actually not about reinventing, it's about recalibrating quickly.

NP 39:12

When you are in such a close partnership with the director, what have you learnt about the dynamics of that relationship? And I assume having different points of view is welcomed and seen as crucial for a fertile creative relationship. But does it ever get to the point where you simply can't resolve key differences of opinion about the work?

SPEAKER_02 39:33

I mean the collaboration with the director, for me, the director photography is the obviously the most challenging, the most essentially important essence of uh success and failure, really, on the project. And it's also fundamental for everybody else. It's fundamental for the producers and the viability of a project, the safety of a project. And there are examples in my life, and I'm sure many other people in my league of work have had experiences, directors who have had experiences with DOPs, and DOPs have had experiences with directors where it has to be an easy and the collaboration isn't easy, and that if it comes well after you're on route in the process, it can come as a sledgehammer, it can be a painful injection of bad stuff. Uh as you get wiser, which I suppose I can apply to the knowledge of each film as I do a film, I learn a bit more about myself, I learn a little bit more about the mechanics and the incredible physicality to making a film, the incredible psychological complexity entailed in making a film that takes you out of your life and takes all key members out of their life for a period of time and you're stuck together in a circus, it's another family. And that carries with it a whole load of consequences that challenge you psychologically, emotionally and physically. And one of the first relationships I would have thought really exemplary of the potential danger of that not working or working is the director and the director of photography because you're so together. You're so once the shoot starts to go into preparation and close prep before shooting, and then the shooting, which is often anything between two months, three months, four months working together, it's all about that. It's all about alignment or accepting that some things are not alignable, but the differences are respected. And I work with different directors all the time: male and female, different cultures, different backgrounds, different ages. And I've worked with some extraordinary directors, and they have many things in common. They have quality and they have genuine uh dedication to what they do, which is one of the fundamental things I really am attracted to and also respect. However different they may be, it's people. And I do tend to go back to some time and time again because there is a friendship there that grows, and it can be challenged at all times, even after we've made maybe three or four films, which could be the case with someone like Thomas or with Lars, as it was, or with Danny, Danny Boyle, you know, the people I've I've made Kevin McDonald, I've made three films, but now just you know, I tend to come back if the platform is still solid and the exploration is still possible. It's about that. As an artist, if you can uh fight for your opinion and fight for your instincts, respect your instincts and share them bravely with the other forces at work in creating a film. Be honest with yourself about what you feel. And it may not be right, but then share it to find out why it's not appropriate or why it's not going to be received. When you find out it's not appropriate, that's an indication as early as possible in the process that perhaps if you really believe strongly about something, then this project is not going to go that way for whatever good reason or bad reason. That's a reason to perhaps step off or let it go, and that has to happen as quick as possible. So the initial exchanges between, in my case, a director and myself and the producers are very important because you want those three forces to be wanting to make the same film, which is not always the case. There are all sorts of agendas. But if those three forces are aligned, as far as you can see, at that stage, then that's a very good start. And I think you can trust those first hours and weeks of exchanges to know they're true. And in some cases, as you know, people leave or people get asked to leave for whatever reason. Sometimes there are wrong reasons, sometimes there's an issue that's fundamental, that less about the artistry and the credibility of the project, but more about power and control. And power and control are essential, but also potential evil factors in producing art at the expense level that filmmaking today is, it can sometimes have consequences that mean decisions have to be made that will cost somebody, not necessarily the right person, but something has to be done and changed. I've never actually I have been fired once. I was fired on a film. I was working in Mexico and I spent three months in Mexico doing a very hard film about South Americans and people in South America traveling up through Mexico in through Tijuana, a very dangerous film to make, and I was filming in the Super. Handheld cameras at night, you know, in the sewers between Tijuana and San Diego, helicopters flying over my head, and I was guarded with magnums and body armor and stuff like that. And I spent three months making this film, which got an awarded film and documentary called Velo Negro, but I was then due to come to New York and film the New York section. I was really excited about going to New York for the first time and had the film in my soul and was ready for it. And we were to do the Mexican section of the story, which is the Mexicans who have managed to travel to New York and working illegally in America, which is very appropriate today and very relevant today, and is still a very fundamental part of American society. And I suddenly got to know it's not going to be you, it's going to be somebody else. And it really hurt me because I actually was very excited about completing the project. And I don't think I will publicize the reason literally for why I was fired. But I was fired, and 10 or 12 years go by, and I win an Oscar, and your phone spins around like a crazy talk for days on end. And one of the first calls I got was from the producer of that film, who then gave me the reason why I was fired, which was a personal reason that was the most obscure reason I could ever imagine. But that's how you know things like that can happen. That stayed with me. I hope that was an answer. It's quite a hard one to answer.

NP 45:15

No, I get it. It just strikes me when you're sharing these reflections and having read your thoughts on your partnership with Las Vontillo, who you shot a number of films with, and someone who you've had a very close personal friendship with, that there is a human relationship at the core of your work and you're not impervious to it. There is a sensitivity there.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, great films come from you know, the closer the relationships, especially in the artistic DNA of the film, you know, the team that are really ultimately responsible for the decision making and the artistic consequences of those decisions, you know, on the day when you're making you've got the actors performing out there, and you've got the colours and the lights and all these crafts that work trying to do the best for whatever this film is about, and it all goes through your eye. It's an incredibly sensitive responsibility and it's an incredibly delicate job. And some directors are more visually sensitive than others. Some directors are incredibly strong on the literary aspects of the story and are looking at performance, and some directors they're also incredibly engaged in every single frame that the camera does and moves. Some are not, some are. So there's so many different reasons why films can go in different directions, and the most important thing to try and be aware and awake to that and respectful of it and understand it's a moving beast. I've had experiences with directors where, you know, I don't think I could really say I could be any closer to that person. And the case of Lars, Lars Montreux was a very, very, very essentially important emotional part of my life for a long time. From early in my film school career, I met him when he was editing The Element of Crime. And he allowed me in and I watched him working. And I, you know, from the time I first saw The Element of Crime in the cinema, I saw it three times in one week. And I'm not even the kind of person who sees films three times, and I thought, this this is a revolution in the sense of Danish film, and this was a smack in the face by a very capable, original thinker. And I was in awe that a man could have the balls and the courage and the ability to do that. And he became a very important part of my life, and then suddenly I became very associated with him, close and became very close to him, and and that ultimately resulted in me making um several films with him that were important to me and important to him. And we had a very valuable, uh, never stable artistic, emotional, philosophical, everything else relationship. And it was a friendship that was deep and was very valuable and important to me and has formed me. And I hope two certain things I've done helped him and also formed him, and you know, we developed off each other, and we had a good time from breaking the way to I was kind of early preparing that film for him, which is why I'm buried in that film, to working very close with Lars on the moving dancing aspect of dance from the dark, and then I'm friends with him and so we're at canned together. I mean, very privileged to be part of Lars's personal life there, which was never stable and never foreseeable. Lars is a moving beast and has been throughout his life. I was part of that and understood it and respected it and explored it and respected it privately, you know, and uh we went through dance and then it became Dogville and Mandalay and Antichrist, which were three very important films for me, and I think very important from Serial. And then uh my joie de vivre and my optimism and my determination to not succumb and subject myself to too much sadness and suffering, which film can inflict on you. Uh that need I have for being able to hold myself above and maintain my optimism in life uh kind of collided with Lars's at that time psychological uh frame of mind and his stage of his life. It was a very difficult time for him, and I think our equation was challenged because of that, and I can't really explain why we any more than that, why we kind of slipped away from each other. But uh what was important and what was valuable is is still there, and I hope the best for us both, you know. But it's hard when you lose that, and that was a painful separation. And I have the working rapport with directors now, I don't need to name, but who were very challenging people and who were very important to me, very supportive, and I know who kind of love me and respect me for what I do and my family and my life. That said, you know, in the heat of the moment when you're on set together, there can be things that are really, really challenging that you have to deal with, and the circumstances can create awkward situations there as well. You have to be grown up and deal with it and understand what it's about. And sometimes I can understand it, and sometimes I'm left with questions that I can't always solve, and I share that with my partner or my close friend. Some questions never get answered, but it is a high-level demanding working relationship, direct and DOP, and it can have incredible consequences.

NP 50:09

You talk about it being a demanding environment. I think to something like 28 Days Later, where yourself and Danny have locked down London, standing there in the early hours of the morning, shooting on mini DV, not even film, because Danny insisted upon it. Do you ever look back on the absurd and pressured situations that you've experienced throughout your life?

SPEAKER_02 50:32

I think many films I've done have contained clear theatrical episodes of absurdity, anarchy, and wonderful, unforgetful, ridiculous behaviour that human beings are capable of, all in the name of art or entertainment. And I think 28 Days Later is one of them. Not because it was so ridiculous what we wanted to achieve by shutting down London, you know, in that magical hour and a half between the clubbers crawling home on LSD to the rush hour commuters waking up and attacking the streets of London again. The ambition was to work in that space and try and shoot as much as possible in the way we wanted to do with multiple cameras and get this historic episode of 28 Days Later done on the streets of London, which was without people, because it was this dystopian world that uh the people are gone and Killian walking around in his hospital uniform and all that. That ambition is absurd, but it's possible. Everything's possible, and uh it requires pragmatism and a certain degree of balls, and uh we were doing it in prep to get it done because Danny knew damn well that he'd sold unbeknownst to me that I was some kind of magician that could do things much quicker than anybody else, because I work with small cameras and absolute cods wallop, as we say in English, but it was the plan, and he always had a plan and agenda, and he's a very intelligent man, and he knew that he could probably get the MI5 and the services of London and the police to agree to something by using, amongst others, that and me as an argument for that it would work. And very soon into shooting it was quite evident that we were doing things quite quickly, and we were getting it done, but we were in no ways uh an anonymous, invisible element on the streets and cut to Centre Point, which is the junction between Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, which is one of the most overcrowded, polluted cross sections of London at 8 o'clock, 8:30 in the morning. We're an hour and a half after uh a win and me out, and he's trying to hold traffic with inexperienced runners who are working probably free with the walkie-talkie in there, and for the first time, and these people are you'll have to put some bips on this to say, you fucking cunts, what are you fucking doing? I want to go out of work. And this was going on, you know, and we were still trying to show and we finally got stopped on day seven of you know shutting down London, very near Buckingham Palace, horse guards parade, where Danny and I had distributed with the art department five tons of toilet paper and flyers all over the streets. And basically the police, PET or CID and the security police, remember this is ten days before ground zero. Uh, they said, you know, this is not really Mr. Boyle and Mr. Mandel we had agreed upon, is it? You know, do you think you could probably get on with clearing up these streets pretty quickly because we are way past the time? So we did get, we did receive, you know, a message from the authorities it was time to clear up. And you'd see Danny and me and uh the rest of the crew running around picking up bog paper, you know, at seven in the morning and screaming commuters. And sure enough, ten days later, I don't think it was because of that, but you know, the towers came down and we were in a imploding political time. I know that when we were searching that film, 28 days later, Danny and I were walking around the roofs of Downing Street, very near Downing Street one night, and there was a little red taser light bouncing across my my brickcage and Danny's, and that was snipers across the road, just informing us that we are in the eye of the gun. Because I think the the powers to be the authorities in Britain knew at that time that something was rumbling that might have ultimately become the Twin Towers. But I think there was a very high orange or red or whatever level of security there. And we were turning double-decker buses upside down on the street at the same time as this was going on, which is a cadet to what film can do, that there was space in society for these ridiculous people to do what we did in 28 days later, you know, in such a sensitive political time. So it is extraordinary what you I won't say can get away with, but what society does do to try and facilitate filmmaking. And I've been in several situations like that where you do basically feel you're semi-taking over and you're outside the law, but you're not. But you have to take that as responsibility and smile your way through it and try and comply and achieve strategically what you want at the same time. It's a delicate balance. Slumdog was the same.

NP 54:45

That's what I wondered because with slumdog, you're often shooting in people's homes.

SPEAKER_02 54:49

You're shooting in people's lives.

NP 54:51

So there must be a need to be able to connect with people very quickly on a human level in order to facilitate that, because you can't just bulldoze your way through India.

SPEAKER_02 55:03

You can't bulldoze your way through anything. You can start and you can get away with seconds or minutes pretending. But if you're talking about a situation where you're working together with citizens of the world in their own habitat, in their own world, and you've been approved to come in there, and you've been approved to come in. And I have that experience from documentary where you are a much smaller imprint on people's lives, and you still have to practice the same psychology of looking them in the eyes, letting them look at you, and and you can't steal anything from them without the consequences. You have to be real and understand that some things work and some things don't work. And if they have a reason that's not working, then you have to respect it and walk away if you have to. But that happens in documentary, and it's a very good training ground for directors and cinematographers and journalists to understand that you are working with people's real lives and it's sensitive. I was only watching the documentary about Mario Paul with these two photographers two days ago again, and seeing this death and this children and this loss of life, and it's just it brings me to tears still watching it. And I I'm aware of that responsibility, however extreme that might be, it's it's there all the time if you just walk into somebody's home, as isn't the case in Slum Dog. I spent my life, creative life there for months on end in very extraordinary places in the world that are homes for people, but they are slums and they're poverty-stricken people living a very simple life. They have very little to base their lives on, but they're there and they're human beings and they need to be treated properly. And you go in there with your padiums and your hotel back at the end of the day, but you walk in there and you have to understand that you're in a different world, that you have a different platform from which you work, but you have a responsibility to do your job. And if you look at people in the right way and respect them, do the best you can and try and achieve what you have to do, but do not tread on their feet or abuse them in any way, then you can get a long way with human beings. But it is about the look. It's not necessarily about the words you say because they've heard all that, and often people have heard this time and time again. It's how you look and how you show yourself to people that ultimately I think defines what you I wouldn't say get away with, but can succeed in achieving together with them. It's very sensitive. And Slumdog, Last King of Scotland to Slumdog, I have many, many documentaries in Cuba and around the world. You're in people's lives, and it's a responsibility you have to understand.

NP 57:22

One of the many rituals that you established on the set of slumdog with Danny was to wake up super early and just walk in the stillness of the morning, scouting locations over a cup of tea together. I I love that as a visual representation of this intimate creative relationship the two of you have.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

I mean, Danny, Danny and I have certain things very much in common. We like to get, I think a lot of directors do, but certainly in the case of Danny, he likes to get there early. He's a worker, he's a very powerful man, and he doesn't necessarily have to do that, but he is there early in the morning. He's there way after everybody else is gone home. He's still he gets out on time, but he's thinking about the next day. And certainly in the morning, he's there early, likes to have his space. I'll travel with him always, because then I'm there and he knows I'm there if he needs me. At the same time, we might walk around individually in the same space but in silence, which often happens. You're walking around just feeling the space because it's suddenly the reality's there. You've thought about it, we've looked at research pictures, you've spoken about it, and the cows come home, but suddenly you're there, and there are real people there, and the weather's what it is, and the time is what it is, and the clock's ticking, and you've got to make it work with maybe 400 people behind you, and they're all looking at you. So that's a responsibility, and it's a factor that you have to understand. And I like to get there early because otherwise, especially I remember with Slum Lord, because there are so many people on the sets in India, and each lens, and I might have 40 lenses. The only insurance for a lens in India at that time, certainly, was a person. So you don't have insurance companies saying that's covered, you're insured. You have a person with a set pair of glasses and a cloth over his shoulder holding that lens. And if you want a 40 mil, a person with a 40 mil comes on. If you want a 27 mil, that's how it is. So each lens is about a person. So you have so many people there. So I often found in slumlog, and remember this, I know from people like Harmony and other people being accredited that title that I'm a person who can survive and perhaps relish chaos to a certain extent. Danny saw me, he said, I remember him saying to me after the shooting, he said, the first time I saw you in a chaos that you were not comfortable with, because you literally, in India, in certain areas, not necessarily in the slums, in many areas in India, there are so many people around you, you're creating a frame, and normally that frame is holy, and you have a camera placed there, and that is the frame. You don't go in there unless you really have to. And if you walk across, you say, I'm crossing the picture. And it's like a discipline and a respect, so that certain people looking at the picture will try artistically trying to work out what to do with it, me included. And in India, there were so many people around that sometimes they'd say, We are now going to shoot, please vacate the frame. And there would still be like 30, 40 people in the picture. You know, I can't see the picture. And I'm used to being relaxed and this is funny, but he saw me falling apart there in anxiety. Because then suddenly, way after the sound has started to roll and the slate has gone, there's still people in the frame. And slowly they go, and there's a guy with a tea towel taking a lens out, and there's a guy with a chair, and you suddenly see the frame before the actors come in, and there's a Coca-Cola bottle, and there's a toilet stool, and there's a bus, and they're saying, Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, and you have to go back and you've got to clear it. It's it's extraordinary. Everybody's trying to do their thing. It's the same in China. I remember shooting commercials and shootings in China and hearing the lighting teams who comprise of not necessarily five or six people, there could be 30 people howling at each other, fighting, arguing in very loud mandarin, you know, way after the slate's gone and they're arguing about something or other. You know, it's a very physical, culture-related experience. In Last King of Scotland, we uh had quite big sets and quite a big job on our hands because we were schooling people who'd never, there was no infrastructure. We'd never had a film like that made in Uganda before. And the the arguments for going to South Africa or somewhere else where there was an infrastructure were big, but we chose to go to Uganda where the real person lived and where it all worked. And that had the response of your schooling three or four people in each department who didn't always know the tradition and had to learn it. So you have to be open-minded about that. But the decision is made, you abide by it. Again in Cambodia with Angelina, I came in there with three days prep because it was an odd situation upon which I arrived. Somebody else left and I had to come in and take over. But uh there were like 400 people on the set the first day, and a lot of people, a lot of kids, all in Khmer. So you have no understanding of language, so you're dependent on interpreters. And the same way at Slumdog, you know, all the kids and the scenes with the kids are about Danny and I improvising and him letting me go with the camera and trying to use my experience as a filmmaker, knowing how you can cut things together, but not being able to communicate with the boys, they're just little kids. So letting them live their life and run around a room, and you try and create a film language with them together that can work in the editing and without interrupting them because you can't stop and say, excuse me, we have to go like this, you can't even speak to them, and then the interpreter comes in and it all dies, and the energy goes out of the scene and stuff. So each film has its own challenges and demons and potential unforeseeable issues that you just have to deal with.

NP 1:02:20

With that in mind, Anthony, can you look at one of your films after it's complete with any level of appreciation or objectivity? Or is it impossible not to think of the creative battles that were fought and lost and compromises that were potentially made?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:39

Uh my career's been such that the last 20-five years I've been so really privileged and busy that I move on. Uh, you know, I do a film, it could take half a year to a year prepping and then shooting and then finishing it off, but then I'm already on something else. So I'm finishing off but with something else occupying my mind. So I find I can remember everything, basically as close to everything as everything can be. I can remember everything because I've got a kind of brain that can do this for about six months after each film, and I can remember takes. And I usually work with directors who think like Danny certainly thinks like that. He can find things in the bins in the edit the night before picture log and he'll pull them out and he tries to produce as mad, but he does that, and he has that same gene and it's very good. But about six months afterwards, then I'll just delete boom and then it's gone. And then it that does in turn enable me to look at something then and at the premiere, hopefully with keen eyes and a clean spirit. It's not always easy, and you have a certain, if you then to dig in emotionally and think, oh, I know why that happened, then you can remember things. But it's a sign that the film works. If you get in two minutes, three minutes into the film, you sort of then suspend yourself into that narrative and try and forget, then that's where a film works. If it doesn't, and if you're sitting looking at the makeup or the lighting, that's a problem. I often have this conversation with my wife, Sana, who's been a makeup artist for many years. She very quickly slips out of the film and starts seeing things, and that's usually an indication that it's not working for you. And that's down to your own capability of letting it go or not. But I can let it go.

NP 1:04:13

In 2009, of course, you won the Academy Award for cinematography for slumdog millionaire. What does winning an Oscar do for one's career, Anthony?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:26

Uh confusion. I mean it's titillating. I think back often, I mean, I don't stay up religiously to watch it out of interest. I just sometimes relive it because I was there once. I came in and cleaned up and then left with a bunch of lovely people, and we were up there on stage with the little Indian kids winning whatever you want eight or nine Oscars for slumdog. And it was a wonderful experience, and particularly one for me because I came in, as we say, and we came in and cleaned up and then left. And I don't, you know, it is a process. If you become part of that acceptance process, you know, by the studios and the world and the academy, which is now 11,000 people who have mixture of competent and totally incompetent people in my mind. But uh, you know, all academies are the same. You know, it's down to taste, isn't it? But that said, you know, you're part of that circus and it's it's over pretty quickly, and you try and get it over as quick as possible. It's quite alienating, it's also fascinating, and it's super fun and super entertaining and odd for my life. And the consequences are okay, you want an Oscar, you're now an Oscar winner. That puts you in a certain club which has a certain probably, I'm sure it does, it has a certain uh cadeau qualification attached to it that means some producers run screaming away from you because they think you're now too expensive, or people that you don't even know and ever meet are thinking that I'll stay away from him or her because they're now that and that means this. And that can also happen on an emotional level with certain I won't name anybody, but it can happen with certain directors that think you're now another person. We have talked about this earlier, but I won't name you. But some people think you become another person because you win an Oscar, which is absolute bollocks. You win an Oscar, it's exciting, it's extraordinarily influential on your future if you take control of it and understand what it is and put it in the right place and then move on. Then I found no difficulty in remaining the same person that I am. Uh it led me to different kinds of work, it led me to different kinds of budgets, most of which I said no to because of content. But uh it puts you on a list where you're a kind of an alias choice for a period of time, maybe 10 years, and you get offered many, many, many things that are not necessarily good for you. And then again I carry the words of people like Conrad Hall and other people who are close to me who've been instrumental, who remind me of what you should think about and what you should not think about when you consider projects. Because at the end of the day, it's you. Your career is about you, and it's not about what they want you to do. And you will get asked by many, many people because they see in you a kind of typecast potential that they want perhaps more than you want. So you have to be very aware of that process. And uh yes, I've perhaps gone up, it's given me a kind of global respect, which I appreciate and take seriously. And it has had consequences as far as my status, and it's led me to other projects that if I do them well, at the end of the day, you're only as good as your last film, I believe. If you fuck up a couple of times, then that's for whatever reason, then you kind of dissipate, or there are other people galloping along behind you, horses, because there's an Oscar every year, there's a BAFTA every year in the same carpet. But um it does threaten to change your life, but I think you can control it. But I think the most important prize is the award is to get up in the morning, look yourself in the mirror, and despite the horrific hair and the skin problems, and you know, clean your teeth, it's whether you accept what you're looking at and think, no, you know, I stand by that and carry on doing the best you can. That's the most important award you can give yourself.

NP 1:07:56

We've talked a lot about collaboration, Anthony. One of the key creative partners in your journey has been the great American director Oliver Stone, one of your projects being the Putin interviews. And as part of that, you personally were given almost unprecedented access to the man himself, both at the Kremlin but also his private residence. I wondered for yourself and Oliver, having spent this amount of time with one of the world's most powerful men, what impression do you have today of Vladimir Putin, both as a man and and as a leader?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:29

Yeah, my experience with Oliver has been very important in my life because politically I feel in many ways very strongly affiliated to Oliver as a person who's grown up in another culture than me, in another world, another generation. But what I love about Oliver is his fundamental, you can discuss whether you agree or disagree in his politics, but his genuine integrity, his concept of being part of a society and serving it, supporting it, criticizing it, questioning it, working with it as a soldier, as an artist, as a writer, I think he's an extraordinarily valuable human being. And uh it's not about whether you disagree or agree with him, it's just that value is that he shows his colours. He showed his colours in uniform, he showed his colours artistically, he showed his colours in the studio uh environment, he showed his colours on the independent. And when we made Snowden together, he had all the studios because he's earned them a lot of money. He's earned his money himself, he's earned the studios a lot of money. And he had all the studios saying, Hey, let me see that script about Snowden, let me read it. And they all read it, all wanted to be in there now, they all pushed it away. And he ended up finding finances the best way he could, and he did it, and we made it for less money, and we made Snowden, which I'm, you know, personally very, very, very attached to. And it's taught me so much about the complexity of life, taught me so much about complexity of finding your own personal campaign in life in allegiance with society and what you believe in, what your instincts are telling you, what your better half and worse half of yourself is telling you. It's a complex life we live. And if you're making films in that society we live in today, then it's also complex because you have a duty. You have a duty to yourself to stand by what you are, as I talked about earlier, trying to do things that are important to you, which you feel genuinely strongly about, with people who you share certain affiliations and political opinions with. But it's difficult because the world is complicated. And sooner or later you're going to get stuck into a political battle. You know, it's not the artistic battles. You do what you do artistically, but it has consequences socially and politically. And Oliver has always been one of those. And he took me there with Snowden, and it was an extraordinary experience to make Snowden to meet Ed and get to know him and get to know a person who's by some considered the devil, and by others considered a messiah. That's that's as far as it goes, that's the problem. And you make up your own mind, and I've made up my own mind. What then happened was uh my friendship, which is deep with Oliver, and my respect for him, which is sound, led me into a slightly opportunist and odd situation where we were in the position through our connections and through our closeness with the Ed Snowden world that we we had the same people instrumental in Russia who could bring us into contact to Vladimir Putin at the time when there was a good reason to, I thought. You know, I've grown up in a country, I've grown up in the West, I've grown up in schools with good people, you know, in a reasonably politically free environment where I could decide myself really to a certain extent what books I read and what books I don't read, and what films I see and what poems I read, etc. But, you know, I've always been a bit aware of the fact that there's a mystique to the the other side of the Iron Curtain, even when the war came down, and you know, the and it changes and is still changing now, and we're in a very difficult time now. We all know this, with Putin's activity in Ukraine and his relationship to the rest of the world, which I tend to try and still put in relation to the history of the Russian side of the argument as seen by Russians. But I don't want to articulate my opinions here in that sense. But what I do want to say is that I would never say no to the situation I was put in by Oliver. Do you want to try and embark on a project where we try and explain a little bit more to the Western world, to America in particular, what kind of man is leading this vast part of the world, this Russian society, what kind of person he is? And I, of course, said yes to that. And I was intrigued, uh, not as a journalist, I was intrigued by the fact I was gonna be brought closer to this person, this human being, and make up my own mind for the same reasons I said to you earlier about how I assess a situation on a chute where I'm in somebody's home and I'm trying to work out how to get what we want but deal with people respectfully. I'm now in the Kremlin and I'm now in his private home with his closest people and his family members sometimes, and I'm with a person who we intellectually know an awful lot about, we think, but I'm now in the room with him, sharing the oxygen. And now in the back room of the Kremlin with him, looking at a picture of his father. The reason being that I told him that I wouldn't even be in the world if my father hadn't been saved twice by Russian boats in the Second World War. I wouldn't even be here on earth. I wouldn't exist as an organism. So twice, you know, he was saved by Russians, once in the North Sea, when it was blown up by a mine. Two out of 17 people have survived. And again, later on in the war. So I told him the story, and he then carted me off one-to-one through various offices and right into the back of this dusty old office, past the the old Babushka ladies with the cucumber sandwiches, and you're in the back of the coronary in somewhere. It's like a cleaning cupboard, and there's this photograph hanging on the wall on a piece of string squint without a glass of his father. And I'm just standing here looking at, and I'm literally breathing the same way. I'm just standing shoulder to shoulder with this one man looking at this photograph, and I'm looking at his eyes and teasing him, saying, you know, he's got your eyes and better looking than my dad. And he's standing in this private space where this some will call a demon, some will call whatever, you don't know, and you're just talking about something as fundamental as your father. So that kind of experience, which is deeply personal, deeply complex, and very confusing, goes on at the same time as I pick up the newspapers in the morning and I look at the news today and I saw Mary Paul two days ago and feel nothing but disgust and sadness and fear and loathing for everything that war confronts us with. I I can't I can't approve of that, I can't approve of either party. We all know that the collateral damage to any war is innocent people and it's unacceptable in my relationship to a person like Putin, as indeed it's unacceptable in my relationship to any other NATO generals or leaders. So I don't change that. My life's just complicated because I'm brought into this situation in a space with a human being who's going to live and die, who's working in his country, doing his job with his family and his children, and you see so many universal attributes, the same as the same childhood and life he've had, and is a human being, and yet the whole ramifications to the job he's in and the system he's part of is just so utterly complex and polluted by power and resources that I'm deeply, deeply torn. I'm deeply torn by birth and I've shared space with and had a cup of tea with, like you today. It's that's really no answer to your question. It's a privilege to see that, and it's a very private experience, but uh it doesn't change the fact that we're in a situation as they were the war is unacceptable, and I believe his politics, you know, regarding the violence and the suffering is unacceptable and has to stop. It's hard. It's hard to deal with that. And I've gone into this world as an artist and as a poet and a human being, and it leaves enormous, enormous questions unanswered, much more than this podcast will ever do.

NP 1:16:03

Just as we draw to a close, Anthony, you mentioned when reading scripts and getting a greater sense of the heart of the story, you're trying to think from the character's perspective. With that in mind, having spent so much time with some of the world's leading actors, what do you appreciate about their craft today that you were perhaps not aware of when you were starting your career?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:27

I think you know, actors uh they're the essential element, and uh, they're such a strange breed of people. Actors, actresses is such a strange, strange life, and yeah, there's no one kind. Uh my relationship to these people has changed from early on in my career, from film school and growing up, and seeing them as icons on the screen, of course, before I even made films. Um, they become people and they become people in your life. I grew up thinking that I would fear them. And you know, my slow introduction to sort of heavyweight actors and being in the same room as them and actually having to confirm with them and introduce myself to them, and that started early in Denmark. One of my first jobs, actually, just around about the end of my film school, was with Ulla Ernst, bless him, where I was a practicant, as we call it in Nation. I was still learning to be a cinematographer, and I bought out onto the set of Peter von Scholten, and Ulla Ernst, who was a well-known Danish actor, a human being, you know, a drunk, you know, an alcohol problem, but that said a really respected high-end actor. My job was to make sure that when he came off that stage, immediately offset, there was an ice-cold beer ready for him. And my job four weeks in the studio was to make sure that was there. And I became his kind of colleague and friend, because he came out four pages or six pages of monologue or brilliance, which is what he was capable of, and bam, down went that beer. And uh that was my first introduction to being close to an actor. It wasn't the the theatre or the fear, it was this all. And then I very soon afterwards I was doing a film in the provinces as a photographer, and all said yes to help. A small film. And my job was then to shoot that film, and then uh on the Thursdays or the Fridays, I drive him back to Copenhagen exhausted after a long day at work and drinking to arrive on Amar scene and do a solo performance, which would be anything between two and three hours. He would sleep on the back seat, I'd give him a beer or two in the car, and I drove him back alone to Copenhagen. Woke him up and he'd walk out of that car exhausted, and he'd go on to that stage and illuminate people's lives for three hours as a theatre actor, and I thought this guy is something else. So that taught me that however you can assess people through normal convention and establish ideas and the norm. I assessed that person as one of the most important actors of the time and loved an extraordinary human being who was devoted and driven by a mixture of absolute love for his craft and you know, alcohol percent or whatever. And I thought, what an extraordinary man. And that was one of my first experience of actors. So I knew it wasn't gonna be normal. I knew it wasn't gonna be easy. And very soon after that, I was doing celebration with Henning Jensen, who would be trying to say you know, he'd talk to me and saying, I realize this is a dog muffin, but you know me, I'm an actor. And he'd just tell me where you're gonna be when I come into this room, you know, and I'd say, Yeah, yeah, I'll be there. So he could get his best side, and I'd immediately go across to the other side of the room and stand in a cupboard. I'd see him coming in as an animal sensing where the camera's not there. And it became a behavior between I realized the fundamental relevance of the camera and me, the operator with the camera and the actor was very a very, very governing factor, very essential and very could be very unpredictable and very valuable. That's a couple of early experiences I had, and it was never it never ended in malice. He was never angry because you have that authority as a cinematographer to decide where the camera goes. You do what you do and you stand by it. So that was my early experiences in Denmark, and then I went to America and I'm working with the legends like Vernon Hersog, who's a director, but then an actor for me, and he's behaving absurdly. And Ewan Bremner, who's a Scotsman, he was in character with a brace and strange clothes inside out, living deliberately in Queens in a rough area, method acting. And I met him on the last night at the rap party after eight weeks of shooting, and didn't recognise him when he walked into the bar because he was on the way back to Scotland. I couldn't recognise him. So I realized actors are very different. These are three extreme examples which illustrate more my career than anybody's. But um, they're all different. And I would say generally now, 20, 25 years on down the line, my experience is that the more experienced, the more accepted, the more settled an actor is with themselves, not necessarily with the business, but with themselves, the more you approach them as a perfectly normal human being and just be yourself, and you'll have a very good relationship with them, and they appreciate that. And I've now had the privilege to work with extraordinarily well-known people, yeah, icons like Lauren Bacall. Lauren Bacall became an extraordinary deep friend and uh confidant, and we spoke together about many, many things that are extraordinary, they were private. Nicole, I've worked with twice, very, very different things. She's just a fundamentally very beautiful, well-functioning human being who's, you know, takes care of people and delivers, you know, they deliver extraordinary, extraordinary performances under enormous pressure. And I think the younger ones are coming out, there's more struggle, there's more tension. That can sometimes end in tension and venom and frustration and insecurity, which could then develop into other issues on set. But I've been very fortunate. Sometimes you're with method actors who are totally method and you're almost in fear. You're not quite sure what to do with it, but you get used to it. But I think they're just people at the end of the day doing a job and you just gotta help them out. And for God's sake, the most important thing is be yourself.

NP 1:22:03

Just finally, Anthony, you mentioned earlier that you feel each project you've taken on throughout your career has happened for a reason, something has resonated with you, it reflects a season in your life. Oliver Stone himself said recently that he feels he's in the evening of his career. And if we were to say that you're also somewhat in the evening of your career. I just wondered, upon reflection, what do you think your body of work says about you both as an artist and as a person?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:38

That's a really hard one to answer because it's uh tapping into uh my vanity and it's hard to talk about yourself like that. You know, I'll be over there in the assistant's churchyard six feet under, and then you'll get the answer. I I don't know what my work really I mean I've always tried to stay true to myself, and I think the reason I've attracted some of the people in my life who have had this great influence on me because they've chosen me to be part of their worlds. I think the reason I veer towards them or they veer towards me is probably because I try to try to be as honest and as direct as possible about what I stand for and take it or leave it. And it's not always easy and it costs and I've I have attracted or come into contact with some pretty extreme people over these last 20 or 30 years, and some of them are I mean they're extraordinarily different, which is in itself a homage to life that we should try and understand how valuable that is, that the value is in the diversity and the difference and not in the similarity. But uh Oliver did say that about the evening. I do prefer to refer to it as the afternoon, late afternoon perhaps of my career. There's a few more in me, and they'll come and uh they'll have their logic. And there is some kind of I wouldn't say it's predestined, it's not, but there is some kind of logic as I now have the privilege to look back at something I know more about than anybody else in my life. I can see there is a certain logic which I have a duty to think about because I get approached by so many younger people who want to do the same thing as I've done. I have a duty to be able to articulate. So I do thinking reflection, which is vain and odd for me. And some people end up writing a book or, you know, doing a self-portrait like Egon Shale or something, but I don't know really too much more about who I am now in relation to who I was, you know, when I was 25, 30, and in doubt and searching. But I am still searching. That means I'm still open-minded. I am still inquisitive and very much aware of the fact that every minute and every day that goes by in my life and our lives, you know, you learn. There's something to learn. There are so many things left unanswered, there's so many inexplicable events that take place every day. And we talked about it before we started this conversation today, the things that are going on in life and how complicated life is. So the the projects that seem to attract me and that I seem to respond towards maybe as extreme as Idie, I mean, and Paul Pot and you know, uh a tennis player or uh Rush, you know, motor rating. They're also different. But there's something fundamental in each of those projects that I may be very obvious or maybe less obvious, but something I tap into that is an essence of what that project is about, which has something that equates with where I am in my life at that time. There's something to do with the world that's completely out of my control, which is about job offers, or other thinking people thinking about something else in their lives. We live in a parallel time when I have my own life, which is completely private, and I'm emotionally and politically and psychologically disposed to that every day. There's other people who bring something to me. They are indeed also in that same process. But then there's something put in between us that is an object you've just called a script or a subject matter, an idea, it could be a biography, but that then brings you together about something not necessarily higher, but something that relates to that, but it's about something different. Something that's inspired by that, but about something perhaps very fundamental in life. It sounds really pretentious to talk about, but that's what Idiomine and celebration and Junin Donkey Boy and Motor Racing and Snowden and the Sex Pistols and Mia Curie and now Bad Bunny, I've said it. That's what life brings to me. And I can't really explain more than that, that you have an instinct about it. And when I'm working with actors or I'm moving into a set for the first time, I'm like a little dog on four legs sniffing around when I'm using senses that are not really about the logic and the most obvious upfront energies in the room, it's about something else, and that's that's what I sniff around. I listen and feel those sense in the same way my little Dashman does.

NP 1:26:57

That's a great mental image to leave us with. Anthony, you've had a remarkable life and career, and I just want to thank you for taking the time to share your story with us so generously today.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:08

It's been an absolute joy. It's really nice. The tea was good, and um, I try to slow down and think a bit about what I think.

NP 1:27:22

Nordic Portraits is a series by me, Ben Catford. The music was composed by Nina Leal and the visual identity by Copenhagen Based Studio Frame. To learn more about today's guest and all the others from this season, visit Nordicportraits.net. You can also follow us on Instagram and remember to rate and subscribe on iTunes so we can get the word out. Thanks for listening.